


A Problem Shared

by the_random_writer



Series: Separated Twins [20]
Category: Bourne (Movies), RED (Movies), The Bourne Supremacy (2004)
Genre: Brothers, Central Intelligence Agency, Childhood Memories, Crossover, Gen, Long Lost Relations, Memories, Plans For The Future, Secrets, Separated Twins, Spiders, Spies & Secret Agents, Twins, Upsetting News
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2018-12-11
Packaged: 2019-09-16 01:36:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16944525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_random_writer/pseuds/the_random_writer
Summary: A crossover where William Cooper from 'RED' and Kirill from 'The Bourne Supremacy' are identical twins.Born in Berlin to an American mother and a Russian father, the twins were separated at the age of ten by their parents' divorce. William went to the United States with their mother, while Kirill went to the Soviet Union with their father.Each installment in theseriestells the story of a moment in the twins' lives. Some are humorous, some are serious. They are all more or less standalone, but interconnect and refer to each other.Michelle persuades William to tell her what happened with Nigel in London.Takes place in September 2009, a week after 'And The Dead Shall Rise'.





	A Problem Shared

She would give him another twenty-two minutes.

Not a minute less, or a minute more.

If he didn't perk up by the end of the movie, she was going to strap him onto the couch, sit on him, and force him to tell her what was wrong.

She wasn't a monster. She was all for giving people the personal time and space they needed to come to terms with difficult news, but this had been going on for almost a week.

A _week_.

Seven days of absent-minded introspection. Seven days of stubborn, sombre, frowning silence punctuated by the occasional brooding sigh. Seven days of not paying the slightest damn bit of attention to anything anyone said, of having to be pestered to listen to questions, then answering as many of them as he could with a grudging, minimal 'no' or 'yes'.

It was driving her _nuts_. And even worse, it was starting to really bother the kids. Especially Tatiana, who wasn't used to being so thoroughly shunned. By anyone, much less the father she adored. If William's behaviour didn't improve, it wouldn't be long before their daughter started acting up, or God forbid, acting _out_.

So, whatever the hell was going on in her husband's head needed to be addressed and resolved, the sooner the better. And not just for her sake, or the kids'—she dreaded to think what kind of issues his mood was causing for him at work. She couldn't imagine William's tough new boss was taking it any better than her…

Precisely twenty-two minutes later, the movie credits started to roll.

"That wasn't too bad," she said. "Not as good as the original, of course, but much better than I expected."

"Yeah," was all William said.

Strike one.

"You want another beer?" she asked, waving at the almost empty bottle of Golden Pheasant sitting on the table beside him.

He made a sound that almost passed for a sigh. "Nah, I'm good."

Strike two.

"Okay, well, it's not a school night, and the kids are in bed, so I'm gonna have some more wine." She swung her bare feet onto the floor to jam them into her shoes, then rose from the couch, taking her empty wine glass with her. "And then I'm gonna go out back, take off my clothes and my shoes, and drown myself to death in the stream."

"Sounds great."

Strike three—Cooper was out and heading back to the bench.

Sighing, she walked to the kitchen to place her wine glass on the island, then walked back to the living room to plant herself in front of him with her feet almost touching his toes. She made a show of crossing her arms. "Okay, Will, _enough_ ," she said in her most no-nonsense tone.

"Enough what?" he asked with a quizzical frown.

"Enough of whatever this mood of yours is."

"What mood?"

Jesus. Did he _really_ not know how much of a pain in the ass he was being?

Time to shed some much-needed light.

"The mood you've been in since you came back from your meeting with Nigel in London last week." She held up a hand as he opened his mouth to protest. "I know he told you something bad, and I know you said you can't talk to me about it, which is fine, but the way you're behaving hasn't been much fun to watch, and it's starting to really bother the kids, so if you won't talk to me, that's okay, I understand, but then you need to talk to someone at work. Your boss. A co-worker with the same security clearance. One of the cashiers in the canteen. I don't care who. Just _someone_ , okay?"

For a few seconds, he set his mouth in a stubborn line, obviously planning to resist and protest, then he dropped his shoulders, nodded and sighed. "It's been a really difficult week," he told her in a quiet voice. "I'm sorry. I know I probably haven't been very easy to live with since I came home. I didn't mean to upset you, or the kids."

Finally, an admission that something was wrong. Now, all she needed to do was find out what that something was…

"I know you didn't," she told him in a gentler tone. She pulled up the footstool to perch on the edge and reached out to lay her hands on his knees. "I'm worried about you. Are you _sure_ you can't tell me what happened in London?"

He shook his head. "It's a work thing. I can't."

He'd told her that the previous Sunday when she'd asked him about his trip, and she'd accepted his response at the time, but since then, she'd remembered some other things that made her wonder if her husband was lying. Or, if not outright lying, slightly stretching the truth. "Okay, but you told me nobody at work knew you were meeting Nigel, and that you didn't have to tell them because it was just a personal visit."

"Yeah, so?"

"So, what's the truth?" she wanted to know. "Was it a work thing, or wasn't it? Is it that you _can't_ tell me, or you don't _want_ to tell me, and you're using your job as an excuse?"

He sighed again and leaned his head on the back of the couch to stare at the ceiling. "The second one," he eventually admitted.

That's what she'd thought. "So, what you're saying here is, if you tell me what's bothering you, you won't be breaking any CIA rules? You can talk to me about what happened without losing your job?"

"That's right."

"Then why won't you tell me?" She moved from the footstool to sit next to him again on the couch, keeping one hand on his right knee. "Please, Will. I'm your wife. It's killing me to see you like this. Don't shut me out. Let me help."

He brought up a hand to rub his eyes, then combed his fingers through his hair.

She knew he was thinking his options through, trying to decide what to say next, and given that she'd just caught him telling a little white lie, probably also how to say it. She retreated to the other side of the couch, giving him some more personal space.

Still staring at the ceiling, he said, "Do you remember back when I was in my last year of school, and you were still an associate at Wilson, Cruz and Geller?"

"Course I do, yeah."

"Do you remember the day you found out you were pregnant with Andrew?"

Oh, boy. Did she _ever_. One of the scariest but also happiest days of her life. And probably of his, as well. "We were still living in the rental apartment in Foggy Bottom. I spent most of the bus journey home worrying about how you would take the news, and trying to figure out where the hell we would put a crib."

"Do you remember what else we found out that day?" he asked her next. "What I told _you_ when you came home before you told _me_ we were having a baby?"

A soft chill ran up her spine. For all that almost eight years had passed, that memory was just as distinct. "You told me the news about Kirill," she murmured.

William's identical twin, younger than him by fourteen whole minutes. A twin he'd last seen when he was ten, and as it turned out, would never see again.

"You'd gone looking for him, because you'd decided it would be nice to have him at the wedding," she added. "You'd hired a company in Moscow to help you find him. When I came home from work that day, you'd received a letter from them, telling you that Kirill had been killed in a car crash in his teens." She paused, trying to judge his mood and where the conversation was going. "They'd also sent you a copy of his death certificate. You were… upset."

More than upset—he'd grieved in private for Kirill for several months—but she wasn't about to re-open his emotional wounds, especially wounds as painful as the loss of his twin.

He huffed a quiet, cynical laugh. "Upset, yeah," he murmured. "That's a real good way to put it."

She moved towards his side of the couch. "Will, what's this about? What does what happened last week have to do with Kirill?"

She pulled away again as he rose from his seat. He strode to the door of his office, punched in the code for the lock, disappeared inside and re-emerged ten seconds later carrying a manila folder. Still standing in front of the door, he said, "When I met Nigel in Yemen in ninety-seven, I told him all about Kirill. Not right away, of course, but later, once I'd gotten to know him better and I knew it was something he'd understand."

She knew what a sensitive subject Kirill was, and that William hadn't told his friends from either school or the Corps that he'd once had an identical twin. She also knew he'd been just as reticent with the CIA, telling the Company only what it needed to know in order to pass the background checks and guarantee his security clearance. He wasn't doing anything illegal, of course—he knew much better than that—he'd just learned the painful way that the Russian half of his family tree was something best left unrevealed. Most Americans, especially people who'd spent time in the forces, or Cold War era baby boomers like her own mom and dad, tended not to take the news well. It was an indication of how much respect William had for Nigel that he'd been so willing to share.

But she'd met Nigel, had seen firsthand exactly what kind of person he was, so she knew how much that respect was deserved.

"I guess you told him about the letter?" she asked.

William nodded. "When he came over in oh-two for our wedding. Showed it to him, and the death certificate as well."

"Did Nigel know you'd contacted the company in Moscow?"

"He was the one who helped me to figure out how. A friend of his from school in England had just opened a Moscow branch for his firm. He put the two of us in touch."

"And the friend from school did some asking around about how best to find a long-lost Russian relation?"

"Exactly."

"He must have felt bad. Nigel, that is." And maybe the friend from school as well. "To provide that help, and have it all end the way it did."

"He felt awful. Was half the reason we got so drunk when we went for our boy's night out on the town."

"You mean the night a Federal Park Ranger almost called the cops on you, because you, uh, _slipped_ and fell in The Reflecting Pool on The Mall?" She remembered the evening very clearly—he'd come home happy, but stinking drunk, dripping wet and smelling like he'd just rolled out of the nearest sewer. The Reflecting Pool was pretty to look at, but it wasn't the cleanest water in town…

Smiling, he shook his head. "Not that night, no. That was my bachelor party with some guys from school and the Corps. The night with Nigel was much more sedate."

"But just as drunk."

"But just as drunk, yeah." He shrugged. "Hey, least that time, I came home dry."

"When you met Nigel in London last week, was it something to do with Kirill?" she asked. Given how he'd opened the conversation, that would seem the obvious explanation.

His expression turned solemn again. "It was, yeah."

"Something about how he died?"

She couldn't see how it would be about anything else. Unless Kirill was merely a link in a chain, and it was something about their father instead.

Jesus. If _that_ was the case, this was probably going to be bad.

Instead of answering her question, William grabbed his abandoned bottle of beer, finished it, walked into the kitchen, dropped the folder on the counter, threw his empty into the trash and opened the fridge to pull out another. Without pausing to close the fridge door, he cracked the bottle and took a deep swig.

When he showed no sign of coming back to the couch, she rose from her seat and went to him. She walked up behind him, slid her arms around his waist and pushed up onto the tips of her toes to gently kiss him on the neck. "Honey, please tell me what's wrong. Whatever it is, let me help."

She felt him draw in a shuddering breath. When he finally turned around, the pain in his eyes actually made her step away.

He took another swig of his beer, then reached back into the fridge to pull out her bottle of wine and hand it to her. "You're gonna need a refill," he said. As he closed the fridge door, she moved away to grab her glass and pour out what was left of the bottle. It was a _hell_ of a glass—she'd probably need the rest of the night to drink it.

He slid onto one of the bar counter seats, indicating for her to claim another, then leaned out to pull the manila folder towards them. "You sure you wanna know what Nigel told me?" he asked, his face set in the gravest expression she'd ever seen.

She didn't need to consider her answer. Heart pounding, palms sweating, she said, "When I married you, I promised to stay with you through better or worse, and I meant every word I said. So, whatever's in that folder, however bad it is, we'll deal with it together, okay?"

He looked her over, as if he was searching her face for signs of weakness or doubt, then nodded curtly and opened the folder. "Nigel gave me these."

The folder was full of photos. She pulled them towards her to examine the image at the top of the pile. For an all-too-brief moment, she was simply confused. When had William bought that coat? Scratch that. When had he lost all the weight, and when the _hell_ had he cut his hair?

Then, she put the pieces together.

She was so surprised, she almost retched. She slammed her glass down, spilling a small amount of wine, and clamped a hand across her mouth, swallowing the sensation away.

William gently stroked her hair. "Yeah, that's more or less how I reacted as well," he murmured.

She focused on breathing calmly and deeply until eventually, she felt able to speak. "Is this… is this _Kirill_?" she asked.

"It's Kirill, yeah."

"But…"

"But he's supposed to be dead?"

"Well, yes! I mean, isn't that what the letter from the company in Moscow said? The one that came with a goddamn _death certificate_?"

"Yeah, it was."

She scanned the photos, one by one. They were all of the same man—a living, walking, breathing man—and unless someone was playing a horrible trick, the man could only be William's twin.

"I… I actually don't know what to say. When you told me last week that Nigel had told you some troubling news, I imagined a lot of things, but I never imagined _this_. It's… it's incredible."

"That's one way to describe it, yeah."

She mentally kicked herself in the ass. This wasn't about her, or how shocked she felt. "Oh, my God, Will, I'm so sorry," she said. "I'm babbling about how _I_ feel, but what about you? Are _you_ okay?" She laid her hand on his cheek. "Please tell me you're okay."

He took her hand in his own and turned it over to press a kiss into her palm. "I'm okay," he said, his voice cracking very slightly. "I'm, uh, I'm still trying to get my head around it, but I'm past the worst."

"This is what Nigel showed you last week? What you meant when we spoke on the phone once you were back from the bar and you told me your day _hadn't been so good_?"

Now she knew what he'd been talking about, she couldn't believe he'd tried to play it down. He'd always been the 'Keep Calm and Carry On' type—a habit he'd probably learned in the Corps, and likely one of the reasons why he and the equally-unexcitable Nigel had become such good friends—but this was ridiculous. If there was one thing in your life worth _not_ keeping calm and carrying on over, it was finding out your long-lost, identical twin had just come back from the dead.

His answer was a sheepish nod.

Now, she felt her anger rising. Typical, stupid, stubborn man, bottling his emotions up and keeping his problems to himself, instead of sharing them with her. "You should have told me last week when you came home," she said, trying not to let her annoyance show. "I'm your _wife_ , Will. Not someone you work with, or some woman who just cooks your meals and cleans your house. This is a partnership, which means we're supposed to tackle our problems together."

"I know, and I'm sorry I didn't tell you last week," he said, kissing her hand again. "I promise I wasn't trying to shut you out. I just wasn't sure I could talk about it without getting emotional. I needed some time."

She felt her anger ebb away. "I know it's something you struggle with because of how you had to behave in the Corps, but it's okay to be emotional. My God, Will, Kirill's your _identical twin_. You spent almost twenty years not knowing where the hell he was, then another seven years thinking he was dead, and now you've discovered he's actually alive and well? Of _course_ you're going to be upset. It's okay to be angry, or to feel like you want to cry."

He shook his head. "Don't need to do that. Not anymore. Honestly. I'm good."

"You sure?"

"I'm sure."

She searched his features, looking for signs he was telling another white lie, but saw only honesty in his face. Either he was telling the God's honest truth, or he was lying beyond her ability to detect.

She grabbed her glass to take a generous mouthful of wine, then resumed her perusal of the photos. "Where and when were these taken?" she asked. Based on Kirill's appearance, her guess was sometime in the last couple of years.

"In Moscow, a month ago."

"Who took them?"

William sighed. "Nigel did."

" _Nigel_?"

"Yeah."

The plot thickened again.

"Okay, but you told me Nigel's an Administrative Officer with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Someone who helps embassy visitors with their forms. Why the _hell_ is he out on the streets of Moscow taking photos of people?"

William blushed and cleared his throat.

"Will…"

He held up his hands. "I didn't lie to you, I swear. Officially, Nigel _is_ an Administrative Officer with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. That's what his business card says."

"And unofficially?"

"I really shouldn't say."

He didn't need to. She wasn't stupid—she'd read enough books and watched enough movies to figure it out for herself. "He's MI5, isn't he? He's a goddamn British spy."

"MI6, actually. MI5 is the domestic intelligence service."

"Oh, of course. Silly me."

And he's not a spy. He's an _Intelligence Officer_."

"And _why_ was a British Intelligence Officer taking photos of Kirill?"

He looked her straight in the eye, and in the calmest of voices, said, "Because Kirill works for the FSB."

Her blood drained into her feet. She didn't remember everything about the eighteen months they'd spent in Moscow, but she remembered what the FSB was. The _Federal'naya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti_ , or Federal Security Service—the Russian equivalent of the FBI. William had refused to allow her to leave the embassy grounds until she could name and identify the various branches of the Russian security services, so she would know how to respond if she was ever stopped on the street. When it came to the FSB, he'd set his instructions in stone—give them the laminated photocard she kept in her purse (one side in English, the other in Russian) which showed her name, address, nationality and diplomatic status, follow their orders, don't make a scene, don't resist if they try to detain you but don't say a goddamn word.

Fortunately, they were instructions she'd never had to use. On the few occasions when she'd been stopped—usually when taking Andrew for a stroll in the park—she'd always dealt with the Moscow city police. The FSB had never given her so much as an ounce of trouble, but that didn't mean they weren't to be feared.

And Kirill was one of them.

"That's… bad, isn't it?" she said.

"Very." He sighed and took another swig of his beer. "Unfortunately, it's also just the tip of the iceberg."

"There's worse?"

Lips pressed tightly together, he gave a stiff nod.

She felt her throat trying to close up again. "How much worse?" she whispered.

"Before he joined the FSB, he worked for the SVR."

She frowned, trying to remember what that acronym meant. Seeing her confusion, William said, "That's the _Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki_ , the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service. Their equivalent of the CIA."

"Jesus," she muttered. She followed his lead and took another gulp of her drink.

"And before that, he was Spetsnaz for ten years."

Now, _that_ name, she knew. "That's Russian Special Forces, right? Like Delta or the Green Berets?"

"Or Force Recon, yeah."

She waited for him to add a fourth horror. When nothing more was forthcoming, she said, "So, what I'm hearing here is, your twin brother's alive and well and living in Moscow, but given what he's done with his life, he's almost certainly a pretty nasty piece of work."

He pushed three of the photos aside, tapping on the fourth in the pile. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure he is."

She examined the photo again—she'd been too busy looking at Kirill before to pay attention to what was going on in the rest of the scene. The woman Kirill was bundling into a car was very obviously scared out of her wits.

"Who is she?" she asked.

William shrugged. "No idea. Just some girl Kirill needed for something." He paused to take another drink. "Or, more likely, that he'd been sent to collect." By whom and for what, he didn't say.

She felt sick to her stomach. William wasn't a perfect man by any means, but he wasn't _this_. Sure, he sometimes forgot to mow the lawn or take out the trash, but he'd never cheated on her (as far as she knew), never threatened her, never once humiliated, dismissed or demeaned her. He knew how to cause serious physical harm, thanks to his Marine Corps training, but she'd only seen him use that training once, way back before they'd even moved in together. He had an _extremely_ low opinion of men who resorted to violence for personal reasons, especially when the targets were women or kids.

She breathed a slight, cynical laugh.

"What's so funny?" he asked.

"Not funny. Just… ironic, I guess. For all that it's supposed to be a cliché, it looks like one of you actually is the Evil Twin."

"Or eviler, maybe."

That made her frown. "You're not an evil man."

"I try not to be, but I've done some things in my life that I'm not very proud of."

"You mean when you were in the Corps?"

A brief pause before he nodded. "In the Corps, yeah."

"That's different. You were a soldier. You were serving your country. Protecting innocent people's lives."

"Isn't that what Kirill would probably tell us as well?"

"Is that what you think Kirill's doing here?" she asked, pushing the photo towards him. "Protecting this woman's life?"

William sighed and swirled his beer. "No, I don't."

His jaw twitched as he spoke—a subtle sign of tension building. Time to move the discussion along.

"How did Nigel find him?" she asked.

"Pure coincidence. His boss had asked him to take a look at an FSB agent who'd popped up on the station's radar."

She knew better than to ask why. "And when he went to check it out, Nigel discovered the agent was Kirill."

"Exactly."

"Was he surprised?"

"Said it gave him the fright of his life."

"Sure it did." She took another sip of her wine. "Did he find out any personal information? Is Kirill married? Does he have any kids?"

William shook his head. "No sign of a wife or kids." He smirked, but there was no humour in the expression. "Nigel said he seems to know a lot of women, so I doubt he's the marriage and parenthood type."

She almost asked if Nigel had found any evidence of their father as well, then decided, on second thoughts, that was a question better left unaired.

Which left only one important question to face.

"Are you going to try to contact him?" She tapped the photo. "Kirill, I mean."

"I, uh, I don't think so, no."

"Why not?" she asked, even though, off the top of her head, she could think of numerous reasons.

"Okay, well, first of all, I'm not really sure there's any point."

"You don't think you'd like him."

Now it was his turn to tap the photo. "Does it look as if there's much here to like?"

"I guess not, no."

"Then, there's the fact he's never come looking for me, which tells me, even if he actually _is_ someone I'd want to know, he's not really interested in getting the band back together."

"What if something similar's happened to him?"

"What do you mean?"

"What if Kirill _did_ come looking for you at some point in the past, and found something that made him give up, the way you gave up when you received the letter?"

"The hell would he have found?"

"No idea. But that death certificate came from somewhere," she pointed out. "If that showed up when _you_ went looking for him, who's to say something equally weird didn't show up when _he_ came looking for you?" She shrugged slightly. "Maybe he thinks you're dead as well."

"You make it sound like a conspiracy theory. Like there's some, I dunno, X-files bullshit going on."

She shook her head. "No conspiracy theories, I promise. I'm just pointing out you shouldn't assume that Kirill's reason for staying away is as simple and neat as you think. You don't know what he's been through since he left Berlin. His life could have had all kinds of complications in it."

"Okay, but even if that _wasn't_ an issue, even if I knew for sure that Kirill definitely wanted to see me, there's another, even bigger block."

"What's that?"

"What he does for a living."

"You mean the fact he's an FSB agent."

William nodded. "That makes him a representative of a foreign intelligence organization, and an _extremely_ hostile one at that. I make _any_ attempt to contact him, even just to wish him a happy birthday, and the Company finds out, they'll put me on such a low security clearance, I won't even be able to take out the trash or change the toilet roll in the johns."

"Could you blame them?"

"Course not. If I was in their shoes, I'd do the same goddamn thing." He took an angry swig of his beer." What an absolute clusterfuck," he muttered. "I spend twenty years wondering where Kirill is, then another seven thinking he's dead, and now I find out he's actually alive, but because of what we both do for a living, he's pretty much _completely_ off limits."

"It could be worse."

"How's that?"

"He could be living in the US and working for the FBI."

As she'd hoped, that brought a small grin. "Better dead than a fed, right?"

"Damn straight."

He finished his beer. From the way his eyes flicked to the fridge, she knew he was contemplating another. It was rare for him to have more than two except on special occasions, in case he was ever called in to work. Finding out Kirill was still alive counted as a special occasion, right?

"Don't hold back on my account," she said, nodding at her own drink. "If you need it, have it. Gonna take me another hour to finish this."

Smiling, he leaned in to give her a kiss. "Anyone ever tell you what a great wife you are?"

"Yeah, but feel free to tell me again."

As he made his way to the fridge, she said, "Given everything you just said, I guess you haven't shared your news with anyone at work?"

"Not yet, no."

"I thought personal information like this was a legally required disclosure?"

His hand disappeared into the fridge and came out with another bottle. "It is."

"How long do you have before it becomes an issue?"

"I'm supposed to disclose within seventy-two hours."

" _Seventy-two hours_?"

"Yeah."

She felt her annoyance rising again. Bad enough he hadn't told her what was going on until she'd literally forced him to confess, but he hadn't told his employer either? The worst _she_ could do to punish him was make him sleep in the basement with Boomer. The CIA could kick him out of his job. Hell, the CIA could lay _criminal charges_.

"Will, it's been almost a week. You need to tell them."

He opened his beer and turned to lean against the fridge. "I know it has, and I know I do. I'm not trying to break the law or get myself fired. I just needed some time to think it all through and figure it out."

"You're gonna tell them?"

"This week, I promise."

"Who are you gonna take it to?"

He huffed a laugh. "That's a good question. I have absolutely no idea."

"Shouldn't you just go to your boss?"

"Can't tell Cynthia," he said, vehemently shaking his head. "Not a chance."

"Honey, she can't be _that_ bad."

"Trust me, she is." He sipped at his beer. "I take the news about Kirill to her, she'll start the process to kick me out of her team before I even get to the door."

"That doesn't seem very fair."

"She's not interested in being fair. She's interested in getting results, and looking good in front of her boss."

"Sounds like a real piece of work."

Not that she'd never dealt with people like that herself. She wondered, who would be worse—a room full of paranoid, backstabbing spies, sorry, _Intelligence Officers_ , or a room full of rapacious, backstabbing lawyers?

"She's, uh, challenging, yeah," was William's diplomatic response. "If she's still my boss by December nineteenth, you can sit next to her at the Christmas party, check her out for yourself."

"Gee. Can't wait."

He grinned. "Don't say I never do nice things for you."

"What about Evelyn, then?" she asked, going back to a previous boss he'd liked and admired. "You don't report to her anymore, but you still have a good relationship with her. Think she'd be willing to hear you out?"

"I think so, yeah. There's also someone in the HR department I think I could go to."

"It's your choice, and you know the people in question better than me, but if I were you, I'd go to Evelyn. She knows what kind of person you are, _and_ how good you are at your job. She always gave you glowing performance reviews, and you told me last year that you thought you could trust her." She held up a hand. "And yeah, I know that's a relative thing, cus nobody at the CIA ever _completely_ trusts anyone else, but you know what I mean."

He pushed away from the fridge to saunter back to his seat. "Pretty sure no matter who I tell or how nicely I tell them, it's gonna end with some very serious damage to my security clearance."

"They couldn't just move you to another role where your connection to Kirill doesn't matter? I mean, there must be _some_ countries in the world Russia's not interested in."

"There's plenty. Problem is, the CIA's not much interested in them, either."

There was one other option, and as much as the law-abiding citizen in her didn't like it, the shit-stirring lawyer in her thought it needed to be raised.

"What if you just didn't tell them?"

His eyebrows shot up. "About Kirill, you mean?"

"Yeah."

"I'd be in _very_ serious violation of my terms of employment."

"Yeah? And?"

He snorted in disbelief. "Jesus, Mike, are you seriously suggesting I keep this to myself?"

"I'm not suggesting anything. I'm simply asking you to weigh the outcomes of all hypothetical situations."

"That's lawyer-speak for 'figure out the easiest way to cover my ass', isn't it?"

She grinned. "More or less, yeah." Her grin fell away. "But seriously. You have to look at all your options. If you _do_ tell them Kirill's alive, what's the worst that can happen? If you _don't_ tell them Kirill's alive, and they find out later that you've kept things from them, what's the worst that can happen? Which 'worst' has the higher probability, and which has the higher personal cost for you?"

"My wife, the risk analysis expert."

"Not just a pretty face, you know."

"Oh, I know," he murmured.

"We already know what the outcomes are if you _do_ tell them. It's almost a given you'll end up being moved to a shitty job. So, high probability, but with a reasonably low personal cost."

"Right."

"If you _don't_ tell them, and they find out anyway, how pissed will they be?"

He shrugged. "Depends."

"On what?"

"A whole bunch of things. Mostly, on what else is going on at the time. If they find out I've been hiding the truth the same day someone tries to fly a plane into the Hancock Tower, I doubt anyone would care. If they find out the same day the HR department launches a new code of compliance program, I'm probably fucked."

"What do you think the punishment would be?"

"Again, depends. Cynthia would just let me resign. She's tough, but she hates paperwork, so I doubt she'd bother with the hassle of an internal disciplinary process. McNamara might be willing to hear me out, but she doesn't exactly have a reputation for taking chances, so even if she didn't recommend I be fired, she'd probably still exile me to filing and toilet cleaning duty. If it goes to IA, I'm dead in the water. Carrington'll string me up by my balls."

"Carrington?"

"Total asshole. Don't ask."

"What are the chances they'd find out the truth?"

"I honestly have no idea. Kirill's been working for the Russian government in one way or another for the last seventeen years, and hasn't popped up on anyone's radar yet, so probably low, but don't quote me on that."

"You think that's likely to change? Kirill not being on the radar, I mean."

"Given the role the FSB's put him in, I highly doubt it."

"What role's that?"

William sighed. "Something called Non-Specific Operations."

"The hell does that mean?"

"It means he deals with difficult problems they can't solve with normal methods."

"That doesn't sound very nice," she said. In fact, it sounded like the kind of work they left to the meanest and nastiest people.

"It isn't."

"So, what I'm hearing here is, if you don't tell the CIA that Kirill's alive, it's highly unlikely they'll find out through other means."

"Unlikely, yes. Impossible, no."

"I'm a lawyer. I don't need impossible. Unlikely's good enough for me."

"You sure about that?" he asked. "Cus if this goes wrong, and the CIA decides to take me to the cleaners, I won't just be out of a job, I could be on a hiring blacklist as well. We might have to move away from DC."

She'd considered that, but she wasn't concerned. He might find it hard to get more government work, but there would be plenty of opportunities in the private sector. And they could easily live on her salary for a couple of months while he made the transition.

"Absolutely," she said. "For richer or poorer, remember? So, when you decide what you're gonna do with your news about Kirill, whatever decision you make, I'll stand behind it."

"Even if the shit hits the fan and they try to lay criminal charges?"

She shook her head. "It won't come to that. Prosecuting people's expensive. You're not important enough to be worth the cost of criminal charges."

"Thanks. I think."

The sound of footsteps drew their attention. They turned in unison to find Andrew standing in the hall, clad in his favourite pair of Spongebob Squarepants pajamas, hair askew, rubbing his eyes and blinking at the lights.

She quickly closed the folder over. Drusha and Tania still didn't know their father had once had a twin brother, so for now, the photos of Kirill were something they didn't need to see.

"Hey, bud, something wrong?" William asked, slipping off his stool to go to their son.

"There's a big spider in my bedroom."

Uh oh.

"Whereabouts? Cus if it's way at the other side of your room, we should probably leave the poor guy alone. I mean, he'll be more scared of you than you are of him," William added, trotting out the time-honoured line that no reasonable parent in the world actually ever believed.

Unfortunately, Andrew shook his head. "It's on the ceiling above my bed."

"And how big is it?"

Andrew raised his hands and used his thumb and index fingers to make a circle about four inches across.

William's eyes widened to the same size. "That's a big spider," he said.

Andrew nodded briskly. "Can you come get rid of it for me?"

Michelle saw William swallow, and tried not to grin. What Andrew didn't know was that his former Marine Corps father was even less fond of spiders than he was.

William turned to her, one eyebrow raised. She knew exactly what that eyebrow meant.

"Don't even think about it," she warned. "You're the man of the house, remember? Getting rid of things that have more legs than us is supposed to be one of your jobs."

"I'll pay you a hundred bucks to get rid of it for me," he whispered.

She snorted and waved his 'offer' away. "I make more than that in an hour. Not a chance."

"Two hundred?"

This time, she simply glared.

He sighed and held up his hands in defeat. "Okay, okay. I'm getting rid of the spider."

"But we can't kill it," Andrew interjected. "We have to catch it and throw it outside."

"Good point, kiddo," she told their son before William could protest. "Spiders are our friends, because they eat all sorts of nasty bugs, and we don't kill our friends, even when they have eight legs."

"We do in Australia," William muttered.

"We're not _in_ Australia," she muttered back.

Huffing loudly, William went to the kitchen cupboard where they stored the plastic tubs, and rummaged until he found one suited to spider-catching requirements. He waved for Andrew to lead the way. "Right behind you, bud. Let's go show Shelob who's boss."

"Who's Shelob?" she heard Andrew ask as they disappeared down the hall.

Left on her own, Michelle turned to the photos again.

She still couldn't believe the news. After everything William had gone through dealing with the loss of his twin, and now, it turned out the twin in question wasn't as lost as they thought? Under normal circumstances, the news would be a wonderful gift. Under current, actual circumstances, caught between the CIA rock and the FSB hard place? Not so much.

She tried to put herself in her husband's shoes. If she'd been told ten years ago that Daniel or Kate had died, and was now just finding out they hadn't, how would _she_ feel? And they were only regular siblings—respectively four and eight years younger—not an identical twin. She couldn't imagine not having Kate in her life. Or Daniel, for that matter, as infrequently as she saw him, and as much of a pompous pain in the ass he was. How much worse would it be to lose someone who, according to some old wives' tales, was the other half of your soul?

She couldn't even _begin_ to imagine how Will was feeling. To know that the brother he'd been with since before he was even born was actually out there, alive and well, within relatively easy reach, but at the same time, so very, very far away.

It was heartbreaking. Absolutely, utterly heartbreaking.

And there wasn't a damn thing she could do.

Upstairs, something thumped. Hopefully, William trapping the spider and not William falling and breaking his neck.

She focused on the photo with the largest and clearest image of Kirill. It showed him sitting on a bench, drinking a large cup of coffee and checking messages on his phone. He looked like William, but at the same time, he didn't. And it wasn't just that he was slimmer, or had shorter hair. Even from a static photo, she could see he was… what word should she use? Tenser. Tauter. Harsher. More contained. She noticed that he didn't look angry, or annoyed, or happy, or sad. In fact, he looked as if he had no emotions at all. She wondered if that was nature or nurture—something he'd always been, or something he'd learned from years on the job.

Footsteps padded towards her again. A few seconds later, her husband appeared, carrying the plastic tub in front of him at full arm's length. She couldn't help but grin. William Alexander Cooper, former Marine, CIA intelligence analyst, loving husband, devoted father of two and now, Spider Catcher Extraordinaire.

As he drew near, she peered in the tub and let out an admiring whistle. "Wow, that one's a beauty, huh?" Andrew hadn't been kidding when he'd estimated the size—the beast was brown, thick-legged, furry-looking and at least three inches across.

William gave her a tight-lipped glare and pointed an elbow at the back door. "Open it for me?"

Still grinning, she slid off her seat, crossed to the door, undid the lock, pulled the door open and ushered him out with an 'after you' gesture. He gave her another glare as he passed, still carrying the arachnid container as if it was a plutonium core. He was out and back in less than ten seconds. She closed and relocked the door behind him.

He threw the container into the sink and turned on the water to wash his hands.

"Andrew okay?" she asked.

He nodded, turned off the water and reached for a towel. "Fine once the spider was gone. Can't say I blame him for asking for help. Damn thing was stuck on the sloped part of the ceiling right above his bed." He shuddered slightly. "Kind of thing that would give you nightmares for weeks."

"It was just a little spider."

"That spider was _not_ little."

"Don't understand why you're even so bothered by them. Like you said, they're more scared of you—"

"—than I am of them. Yeah, yeah. I've heard it before." He reclaimed his beer. "Never believed it when my mom used to say it to me, sure as shit don't believe it when we say it to Drusha or Tania now. If spiders are all so scared of us, why don't they do the decent thing and go live in the goddamn garden instead?"

"Tracy told me when spiders come into the house at this time of year, it's almost always the males, and it's because they're trying to find a mate."

He snorted slightly. "Figures. Nothing causes trouble for other people as much as a guy on the hunt to get laid."

"They probably wouldn't be in so much of a hurry if they knew their date was gonna kill them and eat them after."

"Don't be so sure about that," he warned. "Wouldn't stop some of the guys I knew in the Corps."

She sipped at her wine, surprised to realize she only had a couple of mouthfuls left. So much for needing the rest of the night to drink it. "Did you have spiders in the Wilmington house? Is that where and why your mom told you the line about them being more scared of you?"

He nodded and slipped back onto his stool. "A few times, yeah. The occasional black widow or brown recluse." His expression softened slightly. "But way back in the Berlin apartment as well. Used to find them all over the place." He held up his thumb and index finger a half inch apart. "Tiny things, the size of a dime. _Hated_ the bastards, even then."

Her eyes strayed to the folder. "What about Kirill?" she asked. "Did he hate them as well?" Back to the nature or nurture question. For obvious reasons, she wouldn't mind knowing—which of the brothers' personality traits and behaviours were ingrained, and which were learned?

Another snort. "Asshole loved them. Used to catch them and keep them in a goddamn jar."

"I _really_ hope you're not about to tell me he dismembered them or set them on fire?" Definitely the kind of thing an Evil Twin in the making would do…

Fortunately, he shook his head. "He _was_ actually just interested in them. Wanted to be a bug guy when he grew up. Or a fireman. He could never decide. He kept the spiders until mom or dad found the jar and shouted at him to take it outside. Usually a day or two, three if he was really lucky."

"Gonna take a wild guess that finding jars of tiny spiders rolling around in your childhood bedroom's a part of the reason you don't really like them."

" _And_ what happened in Peru."

Of course. The Great Peru Spider Incident of 1994. How could she forget?

"You think Kirill still collects spiders now?"

"I doubt it," he said. "I think these days, he's got his eyes on far more interesting prey."

She finished her wine, wincing at the 'last mouthful' sensation. "So, what are you gonna do?" she asked. "With the news about Kirill, I mean."

He was silent for a few moments, then said, "Right now, absolutely nothing at all."

"You're not going to try to contact him?"

"No."

"And you're not going to tell the CIA he's alive?"

A pause, then, "No."

She reached out to stroke circles on his back. "You'll need to get in touch with Nigel, ask him to forget what he saw."

"Nigel's a spy. Pretty sure he already has."

"Not a spy, honey," she corrected. "An _Intelligence Officer_ , remember?"

Smiling, he rolled his eyes and leaned out to grab the folder of photos. He flicked through them one last time, and said, "Guess I should put these back in the safe."

"Think you'll ever be able to bring them out again?"

"I, uh, I'd like to think so, yeah. Would love to show them to the kids, tell them all about their dad's identical twin." He swallowed thickly, and she saw moisture gathering at the edge of his eyes. "But I'm not counting on it. It's entirely possible Kirill and I will live out the rest of our lives without ever seeing each other again."

"The two of you won't work for the CIA and the FSB forever," she pointed out. "Just because you can't contact him now doesn't mean you won't be able to contact him at some point in the future."

"Yeah, except from what I hear, the FSB doesn't exactly have a great retirement plan."

"You're worried Kirill might die on the job?"

"The kind of work he's probably doing, the people Nigel says he's involved with, it's gonna be a difficult fate to avoid."

It was a troubling thought. For all that Kirill didn't appear to be a good man, she didn't want his life to come to a violent and bloody conclusion. For William's sake, as much as his own. She couldn't imagine what it would to do her husband to find out Kirill had died all over again, this time for real as well as on paper. In some ways, it would be better for William to never have learned the truth about his brother at all, for Nigel to have 'lost' the photos, and for Kirill to have stayed dead and gone.

"He's survived this long," she pointed out, trying to provide what comfort and hope for the future she could. "I'm sure he'll be able to figure it out."

"Would be nice if he could figure out how not to be an asshole as well."

"That really bothers you, doesn't it? The thought that Kirill might be someone you don't really like."

"Course it does. He's my twin brother, for Christ's sake. At the genetic level, he's basically me."

"But he's _not_ you," she softly said. "Just because you have the same DNA doesn't mean you're the same person inside. Kirill is who he is because of the life he's had and the choices he's made, the same way you are who _you_ are because of the life you've had and the choices you've made. So, if he's an asshole, it's because he's allowed himself to become one. It doesn't mean you're an asshole as well."

He laid his hand on the folder of photos. "I know," he murmured. "It's just… hard." He squeezed his eyes shut as tears threatened to gather again. "He was such a good kid. Yeah, an absolute pain in the ass, but what younger brother isn't? I remember him as quiet, sensitive, funny, generous, and not having a mean bone in his body." He sniffed and hastily wiped his eyes. "It's upsetting to realize all that has probably gone."

She stroked his back again. "I know. I'm sorry he's not what you hoped he would be. I wish there was something I could do."

"Yeah, me too."

But maybe they were reading too much into the photos. A photo was only a static image, capturing a split-second moment in somebody's life. Who could say by looking at one precisely who and what Kirill was? What if the quiet, sensitive, funny, generous, caring child William remembered from Berlin was still in there somewhere, waiting for a chance to come out? Maybe, under the layers of emotional and professional armour, Kirill actually _was_ a good man. He'd simply never had the need or chance to prove it, or more worryingly, had someone in his life to be a good man _for_.

For the third time that night, she wondered about their father. Was Alexander Orlov still alive as well? If so, was he still a presence in his younger son's life? William had told her Alexander had been a writer. Not a soldier or an intelligence agent. If literature was what he loved, surely he would have wanted something more peaceful for his son than a career in the security forces? Their mother had apparently wanted something more peaceful for William than the Marines, but her death had put her resistance to rest. Was Kirill's choice of profession a sign their father was also gone? Was his career a choice he'd made in haste because the Army had at least provided him with a home, and he'd had literally nowhere else to go?

What if William was the someone Kirill needed? What if William's home in the States—the home she and the children lived in as well—was the somewhere else he could go? Would he, _could_ he, become a better and nicer person then?

Difficult questions, with no obvious or easy answers. But family was never easy, especially one with a history as troubled as Will's.

Speaking of family…

"You'll need to put in some quality time with the kids tomorrow," she warned. "Think they're feeling a little bit daddy-deprived."

He sighed. "Yeah, I know."

"We could take them up to Wheaton Park for the day. The weather's supposed to be good, and the reptile center should be open again now the renos are done."

"No spiders in a reptile center, right?"

"No, honey," she said, trying not to grin. "No spiders in a reptile center."

"Then, yeah, that could work. But you _do_ realize that one of us,"—he held up a surrendering hand—"probably me, will have to spend most of the day going round the park again and again on the miniature train with Tania?"

"She _does_ love the train."

"Oh, and speaking of spiders, you know how Andrew asked me who Shelob was?"

"That's the big spider from The Lord of the Rings, right?" She'd never read any of the books—fantasy wasn't really her thing—but she knew he had. They still had his dog-eared, childhood copy of _The Hobbit_ in a box in the loft.

William nodded. "I told him what the story's about, he wants to give it a shot. Not sure he's ready for the main books, but he should be up to reading _The Hobbit_. We could put it on his list for Christmas."

"I'll let Kate know. She's trying to be more organized with her Christmas shopping this year, so she's already asking for suggestions for him."

He nodded again and stifled an impressive yawn.

She glanced at the living room clock. It was only ten, but Tatiana had woken them up at six forty-five demanding to be watered and fed, and given what he'd been carrying around since his meeting with Nigel, he wouldn't have had the most relaxing of weeks.

"Someone needs a nap," she said.

" _Someone_ needs their five-year-old daughter not to wake them up at the crack of dawn."

"She went to bed half an hour early tonight. She'll probably wake you up at six thirty tomorrow."

He snickered, and yawned again.

"Okay, why don't you finish your beer and go put that back in the safe?" she suggested, nodding at the folder of photos. "Then, we'll go put Sergeant and Mrs. Cooper to bed?"


End file.
